Sanskrit
Lesson

Yet
another Great Arhat in the Assembly when the Buddha spoke the Amitabha Sutra
was the Venerable
Gavampati.1 His
name translates as "Lord of the Cows."2

pati meaning
"lord" or "husband," and gavam
meaning
"of cows." It is unusual
to have an inflected form-- gavam
is genitive plural-- as the first part of a compound, but such compounds are
found, especially, as here, with pati
as the final
member. Note that
gavam is written
gavam, that is with m (anusvara, indicating
a sound change that takes place ,
m whenever m comes directly before another consonant. The singular of
gavam is in the stem (non-inflected) form. If
masculine
it means, "bull," and if feminine it means "cow." Gavampati
sometimes means simply "a bull."3

The
Elder Gavampati received his name because for many lives he had
been reborn as a cow as retribution for having mocked a toothless
Pratyekabuddha's eating habits, comparing the sage to a cow chewing its cud.
When finally reborn as a man, he still retained some characteristics from his
lives as a cow, and when he ate he still chewed his cud. The Chinese therefore
variously translated his name as "Cow-Cud,"4 "Cow-like,"5
"Traces of a Cow."6 Or even "Cow-King Traces."7

The noun
pati
meaning "Lord"
or "husband" belongs to a class of nouns that end
in short -i, and so the ending called for by the preposition
Sardham "together with,"
which occurred previously in the text, is different from the ending -ena
which marked the end of the names of the other Arhats so far mentioned. That
accounts for the form
Gavampatina, which is instrumental singular.8 Note the final long -a
which
was also found in the instrumental singular forms
maya "by me," andmahata
"great" earlier in the text.

Inflection
means the addition of endings, varying according to gender and indicating number
and case (function), to nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Sanskrit has three
genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter; three numbers: singular, dual, and
plural; and eight cases: 1) Nominative/subject, 2) Accusative/direct object, 3)
Instrumental/means or accompaniment, 4) Dative/indirect object, 5)
Ablative/cause or origin, 6) Genitive/ possession, 7) Locative/location in time
or space, and 8) Vocative/direct address. The system of inflection will be
described at greater length in future Sanskrit lessons.

The
Buddha had the Venerable Gavampati reside in the heavens where the gods were not
dismayed by his cow-like habits, since they could see the past causes. If he had
continued to reside among men as an Arhat, anyone who mocked him would have
suffered a fate similar to his! The
Elder Gavampati was therefore foremost among the Buddha’s disciples in
receiving the offering of the gods.9